Letters from an American - July 20, 2025

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

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On Friday, G. Eliot Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that polls show Trump's position plummeting. On Friday morning, the average job approval rating for Trump was 42.6%, with 53.5% disapproving. Those numbers break down by policy like this. Gallup polls show that only 35% of Americans approve of Trump's immigration policy with 62% opposed. A new poll out from CBS News YouGov today shows that support for Trump's deportations has dropped 10 points from the start of his term from 59% to 49%. 58% of Americans oppose the administration's use of detention facilities. The numbers in a CNN SSRS poll released today are even more negative for the administration. Fifty-nine percent of Americans oppose deporting undocumented immigrants without a criminal

record, while only 23 percent support such deportations. And 57 percent are opposed to building new detention facilities, while only 26 percent support such a plan. American approval of Imm and customs enforcement, or ICE, is unlikely to rise as news spreads that last Monday the government gave ICE unprecedented access to the records of nearly 80 million people on Medicaid, allegedly to enable ICE to find undocumented immigrants. Kimberly Kindy and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press

reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security that enables ICE to access Medicaid recipients' name, ethnicity and race, birth date, home address, and Social security number. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, although they may use it in an emergency to cover lifesaving services in a hospital emergency room. The release of personal information from Medicaid lists is unprecedented.

Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California, warned, the massive transfer of the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients should alarm every American. It will harm families across the nation and only cause more citizens to forgo life-saving access to health care. Trump's tariffs are not popular. An Associated Press Nork poll on Thursday found that 49% of Americans thought Trump's policies have made them worse off,

while only 27% think his policies have helped. And then there are the Epstein files. A YouGov poll from Tuesday showed that 79 percent of Americans think the government should release all the documents it has about the Epstein case, while only 4 percent think it should not. Those numbers included 85 percent of Democrats, but also 76 percent of independents and 75% of Republicans. And that was before the publication of the Wall Street Journal article

detailing the lewd and suggestive birthday letter Trump apparently contributed to Epstein's 50th birthday album. As Morris notes, Trump is underwater on all the issues of his presidency, but he is most dramatically underwater over Epstein. You don't need polls to see that Trump, at least, is panicking.

He is throwing red meat to his base in what appears to be an attempt to regain control of the narrative. After his July 12th threat to strip comedian and talk show host Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship, she was born in New York and he does not have that power, he has kept up a stream of social media posts

that seem designed to distract his wavering followers from the news around them. On Wednesday, Trump announced on social media, I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using real cane sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I'd like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them, you'll see.

It's just better. But Coca-Cola had apparently not gotten the memo. It uses cane sugar in a number of foreign markets, but has used high fructose corn syrup in US products since 1985. On its website, it wrote, "'We appreciate President Trump's enthusiasm "'for our iconic Coca-Cola brand. "'More details on new innovative offerings

"'within our Coca-Cola product range will be shared soon.'" Social media users posted memes of Coke bottles within our Coca-Cola product range will be shared soon. Social media users posted memes of coke bottles emblazoned with the words, Trump is on the list, and in small letters below, now with cane sugar. On Thursday, after observers had noted both the president's swollen ankles

and what appeared to be makeup covering up something on his hand, the White House announced that Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition that his physician described as a benign and common condition in which veins don't move blood back to the heart efficiently. Trump has never offered any information about his health, and his doctors have presented accounts of his physical exams that are hard to believe, making observers receive this announcement at this moment with skepticism. Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition where the veins in the legs have difficulty

drawing attention from the fact that the Epstein files still haven't been released, one social media meme read. Today, Trump posted on social media, "'The Washington Whatevers' should immediately change their name back to the Washington Redskins football team.' There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams with a storied

past. Our great Indian people in massive numbers want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago. We are a country of passion and common sense. Owners, get it done." Hours later he posted that his post has totally blown up but only in a very positive way. Then he threatened to block the deal to move the commanders back to Washington DC

from a Maryland suburb unless they change the name back to the original Washington Redskins. At the turn of the last century, those worried that industrialization was destroying masculinity encouraged sports to give men an arena for manly combat. Sports teams dominated by Euro-Americans often took names that invoked Indigenous Americans because those names seemed to them to harness the idea of savagery in the safe space of a playing field. By the end of the 20th century,

the majority of Americans had come to recognize the racism inherent in those names, and colleges started to retire Native American team names and mascots. In 2020, the Washington football team retired its former name, becoming the commanders two years later. At about the same time, the Cleveland baseball team became the Cleveland Guardians in honor of the four pairs of Art Deco statues installed on the city's Hope Memorial Bridge in 1932.

Trump's attempt to control the narrative didn't work. The thing about the Redskins and Indians is that Donald Trump is on the Epstein list, one social media user wrote. The post was representative of reactions to Trump's post. Today marked the end of the first six months of Trump's second term, and he marked it

with a flurry of social media posts praising his performance as six months of winning and attacking those he sees as his opponents. He again went after the Wall Street Journal, which ran the story about Epstein's birthday album. He complained the paper had run a typically untruthful story when it said Treasury Secretary Scott Besant had had to explain to Trump that firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell would be bad for markets. Trump took exception to the idea he did not understand the interplay of the Fed and markets despite his repeated threats

against Powell. Nobody had to explain that to me, he wrote. I know better than anybody what's good for the market and what's good for the USA. If it weren't for me, the market wouldn't be at record highs right now. It probably would have crashed. So get your information correct. People don't explain to me, I explain to them. Tonight Trump's social media posts seem to project his own fears on Democrats he perceives as enemies. He once again claimed Senator Schiff, who managed one of the impeachment cases against Trump when he was a representative, had falsified loan documents in 2011 and should go to

prison. In 2023 a judge determined that the Trump Organization had falsified loan documents. Trump posted, Adam Schiff is a thief. He should be prosecuted, just like they tried to prosecute me and everyone else. The only difference is we were totally innocent. It was all a giant hoax. On late night with Stephen Colbert on Thursday,

Schiff said, Donald, piss off. But Donald, before you piss off, would you release the Epstein files? Trump also posted an image of intelligence agents and politicians in prison garb as if in mugshots and reposted both an image of what appears to be lawmakers in handcuffs and an AI-generated video showing former President Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents and then being held in a jail cell. Midas Touch posted, The crazy thing about Donald Trump posting an AI video of Obama getting arrested is that Trump once had someone organize a party for him and

invite a bunch of young women and it turned out Jeffrey Epstein was his only other guest. Alan Feuer and Matthew Goldstein broke the story of that party in Saturday's New York Times. ["Dead in Massachusetts"] Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.